Building an open source software community – SAS Users

This blog is developed from my keynote presentation delivered at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technology Office (SETO) one-day workshop focused on building community engagement for lasting impact.

The community that develops around projects is one of the richest aspects of using, developing, and sharing open source software (OSS). This community consists of individuals who are interested enough in your software project to contribute and you, likewise, engage with their work fostering a reciprocal relationship that enables projects to benefit. These communities must be created and nurtured given the large number of projects and domain expertise that is often required to use and contribute to software code bases.

I'm offering the following considerations that will help you when building and working in an OSS community. This is a comprehensive but not an exhaustive list and they do not have to take place sequentially. The first two considerations are action-oriented and the last is prescriptive for maintaining an OSS code repository.

Did you know that SAS sponsors a robust open source software program? We host hundreds of code repositories at github.com/sassoftware. Before sharing, each project undergoes a diligent review for appropriate content, license terms, contribution guidelines, and legal considerations. A few of our most popular projects include SASPy (a Python library to work with SAS), the SAS Extension for VS Code, and relic (a tool for software developers, not specific to SAS).

Participation in the open source community is energizing for SAS developers too. Many developers attended the recent All Things Open conference in Raleigh (where SAS was a sponsor). The open source ecosystem benefits SAS developers, the tools that they use and the software they build. By giving back with their own contributions, the developers in SAS R&D feel the connection to a larger community of software professionals.

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Building an open source software community - SAS Users